Stage left: Small-scale comedy with massive coronary heart – Albert Lea Tribune

Stage left: Small-scale comedy with massive coronary heart

Revealed 8:45 pm Friday, September 30, 2022

Stage left by Michael G. Lilienthal

You’ll acknowledge right here a typical Midwestern household. The stakes are simply as home and acquainted as these of any middle-class, middle-aged couple with their grownup youngsters and eccentric neighbors. In “The Large 5-Oh” by Brian Mitchell, there’s (virtually) nothing too stunning, nothing right here that’s going to offer you a heart-attack. However underneath the course of Rory Mattson, Albert Lea Neighborhood Theatre’s manufacturing tickles like all one of the best elements of a household reunion. Metaphorically talking, in fact. It must be famous that Mattson was assisted by two up-and-coming administrators in ACT: Christy Fuller and Risha Lilienthal. The trio collaborated to craft a comedy with as many alternative sides as an actual household.

Watching Andrew Anderson surge into the homey front room as sociology professor George Thomas, each buffoonish sitcom dad combines into one. The love he has for his household is buried beneath a loud, giant, lecture-prone determine. Anderson fills the room — the patriarch and he is aware of it — apart from the required grounding offered by his spouse, Marie, performed by Daybreak Friday. This was a wedding constructed to final. Friday crafts for us a Mrs. Thomas who’s quirky and fluid. Due to her subtlety, you would possibly miss it as she seamlessly shifts personas from spouse to mom to hostess to girl. Friday is somebody to look at, particularly as that is her debut in ACT.

This manufacturing has a number of new faces in addition to, together with Kaitlyn Hanna, who stalks in because the younger pupil Sara Donavan. Her motives are in query. Her presence might be a risk. Behind the thriller, although, is a real soul that grafts shortly into the center of the household.

The Thomas household is rounded out by son Eric (Ethan Eriksmoen) and daughter Julie (Michelle Supalla). Eriksmoen bubbles out because the disappointing grownup son who’s a doofus with a hidden intelligence. Nobody is merely two-dimensional, although, and thru some masterful facial expressions, Eriksmoen embodies ignorance, pleasure, unhappiness, worry and extra. All he actually needs, although, is a corpse-shift. I imply a courtship. In the meantime, Supalla is magnetic as the brilliant but mature (however not too mature) daughter who’s exasperated by her infuriating household as a result of she loves them and wishes them, and since she might be simply as infuriating as the remainder.

Together with the coed Sara Donavan, the Thomas household endures a round-robin of disruptive dinner friends, with oddball neighbor-lady Kathy Walters (Kris Bartley) and Julie’s new fiancé Douglas (Daniel Montenegro). Montenegro crashes in like a wrecking-ball, and might be credited with hastening the construct from mundane household comedy to side-splitting farce. I dare you to not smile whereas watching him. However, Bartley is a quiet mouse who’s peculiar and tragic, however I’m telling you: watch intently. The waters are troubled beneath the floor.

Issues is perhaps high-quality when these characters are all in the lounge collectively. However high-quality isn’t within the Thomases’ vocabulary. Issues will break. Individuals will get harm. However hopefully no one dies.

All advised, when you’ve got a narrative a few man coming into his “Golden Years” who loves his canine, is upset within the choices of his youngsters, relishes the long-suffering love of his spouse, and aspires to make one thing of himself, all you are able to do is pull up a seat —after checking it first— and play within the toy field collectively. That’s what you do as part of the household.

Michael G. Lilienthal serves because the pastor of Our Savior’s Lutheran Church in Albert Lea, and in his free time enjoys writing, studying and podcasting on the Tapestry Radio Community. He competed nationally on the Kennedy Heart in Washington, D.C., for Theatre Criticism in 2011. He has additionally written a handful of brief performs and one full-length manufacturing referred to as “The Oak Timber Nonetheless Stand.” He lives in Albert Lea together with his spouse, Sarah, and their a number of foster youngsters.